


Tiens ma main, montre-moi le chemin

by shooponthemoon



Series: Je n'ai pas besoin de voir pour savoir que tu m'aimes [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Blind Character, Blindness, Comfort/Angst, First Kiss, First Meetings, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 20:55:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3148268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shooponthemoon/pseuds/shooponthemoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Blind!Eren AU where Jean meets him or just blind!Eren fluff with Jean!<br/>Did both pretty much, but with a bit of angst tossed in for good measure</p><p>Title translation: Hold my hand, show me the way (but it's nicer in French 'cause it rhymes haha)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tiens ma main, montre-moi le chemin

**Author's Note:**

> YO THIS WAS SUCH A GOOD AU IDEA AHHH I LOVE IT AND WROTE TOO MUCH AS USUAL  
> no regrets  
> I'm not even a huge erejean shipper but this stuff is just too cute to pass up XD I hope you don't mind the angst though, it kind of spun from the characters/situation itself.  
> Thank you for the prompt! Please send more! :D I really like this AU so I'll probably come back eventually and add a "10 years later" kind of deal, perhaps with a bit of smut ;D
> 
> Series title in English means: "I don't need to see to know that you love me"
> 
> WARNING: This fic includes mentions of suicide, depression, and child/teen physical assault (father to son). Please be careful reading if these are triggering topics for you! Stay safe <3

Eren had not been looking forward to going back to classes. Summer had been nice, and the four-month break from course work had definitely been appreciated. Having to trek back to campus after being gone for so long felt almost surreal, and he already felt exhausted just thinking about all the work he was going to have this year, now that all of his easy, general first-year classes were out of the way.

Armin chattered away at his side, but Eren wasn’t paying much attention to his words, his thoughts lost among his memories of the summer. A sudden strong bump to his shoulder sent his shades clattering to the ground and quickly dispelled what was left of his good mood.

“Shit! FUCK!” the stranger cursed as what must have been his coffee splashed loudly onto the floor while Eren stumbled back, trying to regain his balance. “Way to go, asshole!”

“Fuck you,” Eren grumbled, giving the finger in his general direction. “Armin? Armin, you still there?”

“Yeah, I’m here Eren!” came his friend’s reply. He felt his sunglasses being carefully placed on his face and he brought a hand up to help adjust them to rest comfortably behind his ears. “There you go.”

“Where’s your arm?” asked Eren as he unfolded his cane, decided it might be best to use it if the other students were just going to keep jostling into him unexpectedly.

“Right here,” Armin said as he looped it through the space between Eren’s elbow and his body. “You good?” Eren nodded.

He heard a few people gasp as Armin carefully maneuvered him around the apparent puddle. He even heard one whisper: “ _He’s_ _blind!_ ” and rolled his eyes at how obvious and annoying they were being. The only thing that was unexpected was how the guy who had bumped into him had yet to start gushing apologies, as people always did once they realized they had just hit a blind person.

But the guy surprised him, and instead of apologizing simply continued yelling at his retreating back:

“Where the fuck are you going? You ruined my coffee, dumbass!”

“Not my problem, asshole!” Eren yelled without turning his head, tossing the bird over his shoulder as they turned down the hallway towards their classroom.

This year was going to be a bit tougher for him, since he only had Armin in two out of his five classes due to curriculum overlap. Better than it could be, he guessed, but still not as awesome as last year’s four out of five. His sister Mikasa was in one of his other classes though, so that just left him alone for the last two.

Luckily, the school gave him a sort of special needs scholarship for him to use to basically pay people to take down notes for him in class. The amount last year had been enough that Armin wouldn’t even have needed a part-time job, but Eren’s best friend had gotten one anyways, to help save up in case something happened later on and he lost one of his scholarships.

The first two days of school were fairly average, and by Wednesday he had completely forgotten about the whole coffee incident two days prior.

Attention deficit problems, coupled with his inability to see, meant that Eren had given up long ago on trying to learn braille or any form of writing system. Since he thus never worried about spelling, learning new languages went rather well for him, and years of listening to his grandparents jabbering away in German, Turkish, and English had helped him acquire an ear for noticing the subtle differences in pronunciation from one language to the next. Where his eyes had failed him, his ears certainly had not.

Which was why Eren had decided to study Modern Languages as his major, and he hoped to eventually become an interpreter. Being blind, things would be different for him than for the average student, but he had already come to accept that for most things in life.

The required English classes he had with Armin, who was studying English Literature, and they were also taking German classes together. French he was taking alone, however, and as he sat at the front in his first French class of the semester, he wondered what kind of student he would get saddled with as his note-taker this time around.

The room grew louder as more and more students shuffled in, and then suddenly went silent as the professor called for attention. He quickly went through the attendance sheet (language classes were a bitch, you had to attend 80% of a semester’s classes in order to take the final exam), before finally breaching the topic of their “special needs” student.

Eren tuned him out, his chin resting on his palm. Somebody must have volunteered because the professor dropped the subject and started going through his syllabus in French, and shortly after a body dropped loudly into the seat next to Eren.

“You owe me a fucking coffee, jackass,” said a grumpy voice. Eren straightened up when he recognized it as belonging to the jerk from Monday morning. Fuck, he was in his class?

“Fuck you,” was his automatic reply. Eren still had some work to do on controlling his temper, and he took a moment to breathe so that he wouldn’t make a scene in class. “What are you doing here?”

“Uh, I’m attending class? It’s part of the basic requirements of being a student, dumbass,” he replied, and Eren bet from his tone the guy was giving him some kind of smirk.

“Ugh just fuck off if you’re going to be like that,” said Eren, dropping his head into his arms. Maybe if he pretended to take a nap, the guy would leave him alone.

“No can do, not if I’m supposed to get paid for giving you my notes.”

“Fuck, you’re the one who volunteered? Why the hell would you do that?”

“Easy money, I guess.” From the sounds of it, he had accompanied his words with a shrug. “Plus, you still owe me a fucking coffee.”

“Guess you aren’t gonna let that go, huh? You do realize it’s your fault for running into me? _I_ can’t exactly see if someone’s in front of me.”

“No, isn’t that what your cane is supposed to be for? Making sure you don’t run into anything? Shoulda been using it, bro. But you’re lucky I was wearing a dark shirt that day, so the stain didn’t show. Almost gave me a nasty burn though.”

“Sorry, I guess,” Eren finally let out with a shrug. This guy seemed pretty hung up on the coffee thing, so he might as well let him have an apology. If he was going to be working with the guy all semester long, best try to smooth over the bad start to their relationship. “So, you know French?” The guy scoffed.

“Well, my name’s Jean, so yeah I know French. _Cette classe est un peu dessous mon niveau, mais bon, j’ai pas pris de cours en français depuis l’élémentaire alors mon français écrit a un peu souffert._ ” Eren was pleased to note that he had actually understood the gist of what he’d said. Looks like last year’s classes had paid off.

“Why bother taking it then? _Si tu es si,_ um, advanced? _Avancé_? My name’s Eren, by the way.”

“To make my mom happy, I guess. And like I said, my grammar and my _orthographe_ – spelling – have kind of gone to shit since I stopped taking lessons, so I wanted to polish up what I knew.”

“Good enough reason, I guess. Are you going to be taking notes on your laptop? ‘Cause I’ll need you to email me the files so I can run it through my computer program, the one that reads it out to me when I study.”

“Yeah sure, I can do that. Do you want notes of today or not? He’s basically only just doing the syllabus.”

“Nah, that’s fine. You’ll just have to type well though, try not to make too many mistakes or typos ‘cause that’ll fuck with the program and I’ll have no idea what it’s supposed trying to tell me.”

“Yeah sure, _pas de problème._ ”

After that they fell into silence as they listened to the rest of the prof’s semi-detailed explanation of the course content for the semester. Jean left with a quick _bye_ when class was over, and Eren waited near the door for Armin to come get him, pondering how quickly things had turned once he and Jean had stopped being at each other’s throats.

Maybe this semester wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Which could turn out to be quite true, in fact. The next day, in Eren’s only three-hour lecture (a French linguistics class, which was the second class he had with neither Armin nor Mikasa), he was given a surprised greeting when Jean sat himself down beside him and later volunteered once again to be his note-taker.

“Which program are you in?” Eren had asked, curious at the coincidence.

“Translation,” he said with a pop. He must be chewing bubble gum. “You?”

“Modern languages. And that’s really neat, I kind of want to become an interpreter later on.”

“Really? Don’t you have to go through the translation program first though, and then do like another two-year program or something?”

“I guess officially? But I’m kind of a special case,” he said, gesturing at his face.

“True, you would have a hard time in all the actual translation classes. Guess you’ll go a roundabout way?”

“Yeah, but since I’m not planning on doing strictly French-English interpretation, I probably won’t even take it at this university.”

“Hmm,” Jean replied, but their conversation progressed no further as their professor called for attention. She sounded like quite a stern woman, so Eren didn’t dare start chatting again until after class, but they didn’t get to say much as Jean had to rush out to an evening class.

Friday mornings were Eren’s workout mornings. He’d known his personal trainer, Reiner, since near the end of high school, and the two got along quite well. Then again, with Reiner’s motherbear-like personality, Eren seriously doubted there was a single person who couldn’t like the guy. Since most team sports were pretty much an impossibility for Eren, he kept in shape with Reiner’s help and supervision, doing a bit of muscle training and a lot of cardio.

Eren had always liked jogging; help him clear him mind and get rid of his excess of energy. Treadmills were wonderful, because in everyday life Eren always had to be careful about where he was going and where he was stepping, and as a naturally energetic person he hated feeling so restricted in his movements. He despised always having to move slowly and carefully, so being able to run without worrying about smacking into something was such an amazing feeling. Sometimes he would imagine himself as a bird while running, and wondered what it felt like to be so free and weightless.

His only class on Fridays was an afternoon one – the second half of Wednesday’s French class. He’d been surprised at how eager he had felt while walking to campus with Mikasa, but he figured he was just in a good mood from the workout and long shower he had taken afterwards.

Class went by relatively quickly; Eren just sat there, half listening to the professor and half listening to the sound of Jean typing away on his laptop. Eren could always tell when he made a mistake, because he’d mash the backspace button and sometimes even start to swear angrily under his breath. Eren would laugh at that, earning a smack on the leg in retaliation and a quiet “ _Shut up!_ ” hissed in his direction.

They packed up their stuff at the end of class, bickering about which Lord of the Rings movie they thought was the best.

“Return of the King, _obviously_ ,” sighed Eren. “It’s the climax movie of an epic trilogy, no way it isn’t the best!”

“Last movie means nothing,” scoffed Jean. “Two Towers all the way man. I fucking love the Battle of Helm’s Deep! Besides, you can’t deny that the Rohan theme music is pretty damn sweet, probably one of my favourite tracks actually.”

“Uh, hey, Eren?” a voice called out shyly, startling the two. They had gotten so caught up in their argument that they hadn’t even noticed they were the last two left in the classroom.

“Oh, Armin! Sorry, didn’t _see ya_ there,” Eren said, making both him and Jean snicker at his bad humour.

“Very funny, Eren. Haven’t heard that one before,” Armin deadpanned. “Isn’t that…?”

“Oh yeah, I’m coffee guy. Sorry about yelling at you guys on Monday. I’m Jean.”

“Oh, nice to see you guys getting along, I guess? I’m Armin.”

“He’s my beeest friend!” Eren exclaimed, grabbing at the shorter boy’s arm and pulling him in, using his other arm to fluff up his hair. Armin quickly pushed him away, chuckling.

“So hey,” began Jean, tapping Eren’s shoulder to get his attention, “you know you still owe me that damn coffee. You know any good places around here?”

“Dunno… Armin, wasn’t there that new place you wanted to try out down in the market?”

“Sure, we could go there if you’d like,” Armin replied, looping his arm into Eren’s as he guided him out the door and led the two of them to a tiny coffee shop downtown, about 10 minutes from campus.

They ordered their drinks and sat down in a booth. Eren didn’t care much for coffee so he’d just settled for a hot chocolate, and spent a few minutes idly blowing on it, waiting for it to cool down, as Armin and Jean discussed their favourite types of caffeinated drinks.

“I like your scarf, Jean, did you get it at that new store on Rideau street?” Armin asked curiously, changing the topic. Eren rolled his eyes; he knew his friend was into a lot of the trendy fashion stuff, but to him clothes were just clothes, and he simply wore whatever felt comfortable.

“Yeah, actually! I picked up a couple of the ones with those cool patters, but this one I just liked the softness of it. Here Eren, touch it!” Jean said suddenly, grabbing Eren’s hand from across the table and bringing it up to his scarf. He did nothing for a few seconds, stunned, but then started to feel the fabric between his fingers and oh wow, yeah, that was pretty freaking soft! Shit, now he wanted a scarf that felt like that.

“Duuude, this is so nice!” He leaned forward as much as he could, resting his elbows on the table, and grabbed a couple of fistfuls of the scarfs, marvelling at how nice it felt. “Yooo I want one!”

“I know, eh?” Jean said with a laugh. A chuckle from Armin broke their moment.

“Really Eren? And you keep say _I’m_ the one who’s gay…” For some reason, he felt Jean still, tension rolling off of him in waves.

“Shut up, Armin! Besides, you’re the one who’s kissed a _girl_ , sounds pretty gay to me!” he declared, trying to lighten things back up but also unable to let Armin one-up him _again_.

“Hmmm well you’re the one who’s actually attracted to guys, so I’m pretty sure that makes _you_ the gayest one here,” Armin said rather smugly, knowing he’d gotten the last word in.

“Good point,” Eren conceded after a pause, and only let go of Jean’s scarf once he felt the guy relax. He sat back and finished the last of his hot chocolate. “Well, you guys might love the coffee here, but the hot chocolate kind of sucks.”

“If it’s great hot chocolate you’re looking for, I know the _perfect_ place,” Jean said, and Eren could tell from him tone that his new friend was smiling again. “We should go there next week instead.”

And that was how their weekly tradition was started: every week after their Friday classes, the three of them, sometimes joined by Mikasa, would meet up and walk to a small café owned by the father of one of Jean’s close friends. The food was _beyond_ amazing, and Eren’s group regretted not having known about the place sooner.

Sasha, the daughter of the owner, and Connie, Jean’s best friend, both worked there part-time waiting tables. The two were always lively and thrumming with energy, and Eren was a bit jealous he wasn’t able to run about freely as they did. Being surrounded by so many friends at once did give him a certain excited buzz, however, and Fridays quickly became his favourite day of the week.

Eren also started going there with Armin to study during their breaks, as the university’s library was always full and rather loud, regardless of the warnings to keep quiet. Jean would join them often, adding a few helpful remarks here and there on their notes from German class (“The last name’s not Kirschtein for nothing, Eren _Jaeger_ ”).

But more often than not, when the two wanted to study for French, they would retreat to Jean’s apartment so they could study in peace. As much as they loved Connie and Sasha, those two clowns could be quite loud and distracting with all of their crazy antics, _and_ with Sasha’s constantly demanding that they taste some of her “culinary creations”.

By then Eren felt comfortable enough around Jean to let him guide him by the arm, and though he wasn’t as good at it as Armin or Mikasa were with their years of practice, their first doorframe incident was eventually forgotten and Eren quickly found that he trusted Jean completely.

And beyond the whole schoolwork aspect, he enjoyed spending time with the guy. Jean’s sarcasm was cutting and always on point, and both their senses of humour matched perfectly. On slow weeks, they would spend a few hours sitting on Jean’s bed, just scrolling through funny websites as Jean read the jokes out loud, Eren rolling around with laughter.

They also did spend a lot of time practicing French, and German too. Soon they could go an entire conversation seamlessly slipping from one language to the next, and it earned them strange looks among their friends who only understood part of what they were saying. Eren also tried to teach Jean a bit of Turkish, but the taller boy didn’t seem to be picking it up, so in the end he only managed to retain a couple of words here and there, and even then his pronunciation was kind of off.

Sometimes Armin joined them at Jean’s place to hang out, and Eren would just sit at Jean’s keyboard, mashing keys to produce random notes, while the other two went through Jean’s closet and apparently extensive collection of scarves. Every once in a while Jean would pull out something that he never wore anymore or that had gotten too small, and handed it off to Armin. Though they had quite a difference in height, the two were roughly the same slim build, and Armin managed to fit into his older clothes quite well.

Eren would get bored at them discussing clothes and whatnot, so he would start singing obnoxiously to distract them, usually earning him a mouthful of fabric as Jean would throw dirty socks at him.

“You’re such a big baby,” Jean would chastise him, making Armin laugh. “You could learn to sing properly, at least.”

“Shut up, asshole!” Eren would retort before stumbling over to Jean’s bed, grabbing his pillows and flinging them over to the side of the room he knew Jean’s closet was.

“HAHA loser, you missed!” Jean would yell, roaring with laugher and tossing a couple back, always hitting Eren square in the face.

The three would never admit this to anyone else, but nights like those usually ended up in intense pillow fights, the three of them passing out on Jean’s bed at 1 AM, no clear winner among them.

It was on a Friday morning about a month before final exams that Reiner finally burst Eren’s little bubble of oblivious contentment. They had been in the middle of a set of arm reps when Reiner dropped the bomb on him:

“You know, you sure do talk about that Jean guy a lot these days,” he began, one hand placed firmly on Eren’s back to reassure him of his presence. “You think you might have a crush on the guy?”

The question pretty much shorted out Eren’s brain as his imagination started reeling with the possibilities, thoughts frantically trying to analyze his memories and emotions to determine exactly how he felt about his friend. The resulting conclusion brought a blush to his cheeks and he let his arms drop, his breath becoming erratic as his heartrate sped up.

“Hey hey hey man, don’t drop the weights!” Reiner exclaimed, taking the dumbbells from his loosening grasp. “Whoa there, looks like you just did some pretty heavy thinking! Sorry for springing that on you but… looks to me like you’ve got it pretty bad, buddy!”

Eren just nodded dumbly as Reiner let out one of his signature booming laughs. He decided to call it a day and thanked Reiner, heading to the showers.

He was rather quiet during class, Reiner’s words echoing in his mind as he sat next to Jean, who was of course completely oblivious to Eren’s dilemma and was typing away as usual. Near the end of class he heard Jean’s phone vibrate as it received a couple of texts. After class ended Jean read them, relaying the general contents to Eren.

“Armin and Mikasa can’t come tonight, group project stuff, and there’s some sort of birthday party going on at the café so the place is packed. Sasha says to not even bother coming.”

“Oh,” said Eren, a little dejected at having their plans suddenly cancelled.

“That’s perfect though, I know exactly where we should go!” Jean exclaimed, looping his arm through Eren’s and leading him away.

“So there’s this new restaurant place opening just down the street from where our café is, right? Last week Sasha’s dad pulls me aside, says if I ever get a night off I should go over and scope out the competition for him, and that he’d even pay me back for the meal!” Jean said excitedly. “You up for it?”

Eren felt himself blush, and hoped that Jean would think it was due to the cold. Because what Jean had proposed sounded very much like a date to Eren, and there was no way he could refuse. He nodded, not trusting himself to speak at the moment.

The two arrived at the restaurant at the busiest time of the day, and the place was already quite full. When it was finally their turn to be seated, the hostess let out a little gasp, no doubt as she noticed Eren’s sunglasses and cane.

“Does your friend need a braille menu? I’m not sure if we have one but I could always go check in the back,” she asked in that annoying tone people used around him, as if they were dealing with someone who had a mental disability (which, even if he did, he would not like to be talked to that way). Eren felt as Jean stiffened in anger, his hand squeezing Eren’s arm tightly.

“I’m not sure. Perhaps you could ask _him_ if he needs one?” he answered coldly, no mercy in his tone.

“Ah, um, yes, I’m so sorry, um, did you need a braille menu, sir?” she managed to say.

“No, that won’t be necessary,” answered Eren, surprised at how well he’d kept his anger from showing. “If you could just show us to our seats?”

She let out a squeak and almost started running as she led them further into the restaurant, Jean carefully maneuvering Eren around the tables with a firm hand on his shoulder, the touch sending sparks down Eren’s arm.

They sat and eventually ordered, both of them remaining quite glum throughout the meal. The food was fine, but nothing special, and Eren was pretty sure that they’d never return here again.

“Well, Sasha’s dad is gonna be happy to hear this place has nothing on his, at least,” Jean sighed as they left the restaurant and headed towards his apartment, the sudden cold making Eren shiver. “Shit man, did you not bring mitts? You’re such an idiot, it’s fucking November!”

“Shut up,” Eren groused as he felt his cheeks heat up once again. It didn’t help that Jean had grabbed his hand and pulled one of his mittens over it, the cold instantly diminishing.

When they got to Jean’s place, Eren simply lay down in bed, feeling drained, while Jean paced about his room, still worked up over the events at the restaurant.

“You don’t tend to let things go easily, do you?” Eren piped up after being silent for a few minutes.

“Yeah, well, that was fucking rude!” Jean burst out. A muffled bang followed by swearing told Eren that Jean had probably kicked his wall in anger and managed to stub his toe.

“Damn right it was, but I’m pretty used to it,” Eren sighed. “Get over here before you hurt yourself; you’re too worked up.” Jean dragged himself over to the bed and sat heavily next to Eren.

“She acted as if you weren’t even a fucking person, Eren!” he growled, dropping his head to Eren’s shoulder. “How fucking dare she! And how dare everybody else, everybody who made you fucking ‘ _Used to it’_ , like no!”

Eren carefully pulled Jean closer to him and draped an arm around his shoulder. From the sobs that were starting to emanate from Jean’s throat, he suspected there was more to this story than just what had happened today at the restaurant.

For him though, Jean’s words were hitting home, and made him realize that one of the fundamental reasons _why_ he had fallen for the guy in the first place was that he always treated him so _normally_ , even the first day they’d met. He’d never seen Eren as a blind person – just a person, that’s all. And it was usually the kind of thing he’d only come to expect from Armin and his family, and having somebody else treat him that way, well… it meant a lot to him.

“You matter,” Jean muttered into Eren’s shirt through his tears. “You matter to me.”

In that moment, Eren figured to hell with consequences. He needed nothing more than to have Jean know how much _he_ mattered to Eren, and right that second he could come up with no better idea than giving him a kiss.

It was a bit clumsy, Eren groping for Jean’s face until he found his chin, and tugged his head upwards until their lips could meet. Jean immediately returned the kiss, bringing a hand up to cradle Eren’s cheek. When they finally parted, Jean rested their foreheads together as they sat, breathing in tandem.

“I… I need to tell you something,” Jean said, finally breaking the silence. Eren nodded, biting his lip.

“When I was… when I was in high school,” Jean began, “I had a friend named Marco. Boyfriend, actually, by the end of it. Marco was… depressed though, and I knew that, I knew that it had started even before I even met him, and I knew that dating me wouldn’t change that. I never tried to fix him, as some people did, because I knew that he wasn’t fucking _broken_.”

“He had scars on his wrists,” he continued, tracing faint lines over Eren’s with his finger, “but I managed to get him to stop cutting once we became friends. The scars were there though, and people saw no matter how well he tried to hide them. And they treated him like glass, for the most part, like any wrong word would cause him to shatter, or like he was some sort of disease they wanted nothing to do with. Others just bullied him, bullied the both of us, and _that_ especially didn’t help.” He gave a hollow chuckle.

“He killed himself, shortly before high school ended.” Jean was crying steadily now, the tears wetting Eren’s nose as he nuzzled Jean’s cheek. “He didn’t even leave a note, might not have… I don’t know what… something must have happened, with his parents, they must have found out about us, but I don’t…”

Eren waited silently for Jean to calm himself enough to continue.

“I never found out though, because they said nothing, not even at the funeral, just nothing. I was standing there crying my eyes out, and they said nothing. So I couldn’t tell what had really gone down in the end, and even now I still don’t fucking know.”

“And then I left to go to university. I actually… was in a different program at the time, back in the city my dad lived in.” Eren remembered Jean previously mentioning how his parents were divorced. “I figured distance from here would help. And things were going fine, as fine as they could be, until about a month in, and my dad… my dad…” Jean paused again, seeming to curl in upon himself, and Eren rubbed his back soothingly.

“I don’t know how he found out. I have no fucking clue how he found out about me and Marco, how he found I was gay, but…” he trailed off, sitting back up. Eren felt Jean slowly remove his scarf and toss it aside. He then gently took Eren’s hands and lifted them up to his neck. Eren tensed as he felt the unevenness of the skin beneath his fingers, from what felt like a linear scar going across the front of Jean’s neck, near the bottom.

“He tried to kill me, Eren. He fucking strangled me with a cord, I couldn’t breathe, I was bleeding, I…” Eren sought to calm him down, rubbing gentle circle on his neck with his thumbs before leaning down to nuzzle his neck and kiss a line along the scar.

“You’re ok, I’m here with you, you’re safe,” he whispered into his skin.

“I almost died. I _should_ have died. But I didn’t, and that fucker went to jail.” Eren continued kissing his neck, slowly moving up towards his jaw. “Eventually I went back to school, and I thought I’d be fine, you know? My past was so fucked up, the worst had to be behind me.” He let out a noise halfway between a laugh and a sob.

“But of course I was wrong. Because I was stupid, and I trusted others too much. I let them see, and they stared and stared and stared. All the people I thought had been my friends? Immediately dropped me. Nobody wants to hang out with the guy whose dad tried to kill him, the guy with the scarred bruise around his neck, the freak. There were some people who shunned me for being gay, and strangely enough that didn’t cut as deeply as the rest, as if I had been expecting it.” Another hollow laugh.

“And it didn’t stop there… everywhere I went, the staring followed. People couldn’t even look me in the eye anymore as we talked; their eyes would always drift downwards. Guess I found out what a girl with good cleavage feels like, right?” Eren chuckled against the skin of Jean’s cheek. “Everyone was always judging me, I knew it, and I could feel them whispering about me behind my back. Eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore, so I left university and moved back here, back in with my mom, but I couldn’t stand the way she’d always start tearing up around me. I know she blames herself a lot for what happened, for not trying to keep me away from my dad… so I left, got an apartment, enrolled back in school, and well, here I am.”

Eren’s lips left Jean’s skin and he brought their foreheads to rest against each other once more, hands holding Jean’s in a comforting squeeze.

“As much as I hate that so many terrible things have happened to you – none of which you deserve, you _need_ to know that,” Eren began, “I am _so_ very glad that you are here right now. Because honestly, meeting you has been one of the best things that has ever happened to me. Being with you just feels so natural, and you make me feel so happy.” Jean sniffed, pulling one of his hands loose to wipe at his eyes.

“It was a pretty shitty first meeting though,” he said, and they both giggled.

“Yeah, you suck at first impressions,” Eren conceded. “But thank you though, really, for telling me this. And always treating me like a normal person.”

“Well, you’re not exactly normal, considering how normal people aren’t all dumb like you,” Jean joked, earning him a smack on the leg. “But I know _so well_ what it’s like to be treated like a freak show, being started at and handled with caution. I would _never_ do that to somebody else, least of all you.”

“Can I tell you something?” Eren asked, and he felt Jean nod against his forehead. “I’ve been blind my whole life, so I’m pretty used to not seeing by now. And I sometimes think it’s almost worse for those who lose their sight later on, you know? Because they remember exactly what it’s like to see, but they’ll never be able to anymore… But at the same time, I’m jealous at them for having had that chance.”

“I wasn’t born blind, but I had a ton of health complications, from a disease or infection or something. My dad’s a doctor and still I never understand half of the explanations he gives me, all that science-y talk. Anyways, I think I have this one memory, a single image in my mind of something I saw: my mother’s eyes. That’s it really, but it’s enough for me.”

“My dad was part of the team of doctors working on a cure for whatever it was I had. They were successful in the end, and I recovered from the illness, but I lost my eyesight in the process. We’re still not sure if it was a side-effect from the medicine, or just another complication from the infection. But either way, I’ve been blind ever since. My dad still feels guilty about it sometimes, but my mom always reminds him that he saved my life, and that’s what’s important. And even with my blindness, I’ve had a pretty good life so far. Mikasa’s had it tougher than me, but that’s her story to tell.”

“Thank you for telling me,” Jean said in a hushed town, and Eren was pleased to note that he generally seemed to have calmed down from before. He was surprised by a pair of lips against his, and Eren’s heart sped up when he realized this was the first kiss initiated by Jean himself. “Stay with me?” he whispered after their lips parted.

“Of course,” Eren replied, letting himself be guided into lying down on Jean’s bed as the boy tugged the blankets up and over them. Eren lay back into a pillow and felt Jean rest his head on his chest near his shoulder. He brought his hand up to Jean’s head and started stroking his hair, fingers exploring the strange feeling of the shorter, buzzed area on the sides of his head.

“I never knew you had an undercut, Jean,” Eren whispered. “Your hair is so soft.” Jean chuckled.

“You seem to really dig soft textures and stuff, it’s cute!”

“I’m not cute!”

“Yeah, you are man. I’m the one with eyes here, remember? So trust me when I say you’re cute. And hot, yeah, you’re pretty darn hot too.” Eren was glad that Jean couldn’t see him blushing from his position.

“Well, ah… you have a nice voice,” Eren said for lack of any better ideas. It was the truth though; he had always enjoyed listening to Jean talk, especially in French.

“ _Merci~!_ ” Jean purred directly into his ear, making Eren jump as he let out an embarrassing yelp. “Anything else you like about me? Because I could go on about you for ages.”

The two lay like that for a couple of hours, talking about what they loved best about one another. They shared a few more kisses here and there, but for the most part Eren simply enjoyed the feel of being so close to Jean, of having his comforting warmth pressed against him. They eventually fell asleep, still tangled up in each other.

When they met up with their friends the next day, hands intertwined, thoughts lost in each other, even Jean failed to spot Connie slipping a triumphant Sasha a twenty-dollar bill, a long-time bet having finally been won.

The two lovebirds were much too distracted by each other, stealing soft touches here and there under the table, and if their friends made fun of them for being cute, well, neither was paying much attention to them anyways.

**Author's Note:**

> There's actually a scholarship like that at my university... I had somebody with vision problems in one of my first year classes, but my handwriting is shit so I didn't bother volunteering to take notes for her.
> 
> Jean's long sentence in French roughly means: "This class is a bit below my level, but oh well, I haven't taken classes in French since elementary school so my written French has kind of suffered."
> 
> I hope you guys liked it! Not sure when I'll get around to adding more in this 'verse but it'll happen eventually ;)
> 
> I'm still taking prompts over on tumblr (shooponthemoon), doesn't have to be erejean though, just check my fandoms list


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